On my nightly circuits around the island to gather data, I
bring a five-gallon bucket to fill with trash from the beach.
I can easily fill it on the first trip. After just ten nights,
I have collected 26 lighters, six glow sticks, four sneakers
(none my size, unfortunately), 43 glass bottles, one stick of
deodorant, 89 bottle caps, 86 floats of various sizes, 13 flourescent
light bulbs, 43 glass bottles, 47 plastic bottles, three rubber
balls, one can of Cheez Whiz (working!) and a volleyball.

The fruits of one man’s labor.
Photo credit: Joe Spring/USFWS/NMFS

Much of it comes from over the horizon: wind- or water-borne
debris from landfills, discarded or lost commercial fishing
tackle, waste from ships or oil rigs, and debris from shipwrecks
account for much of the problem. I have barely made a dent in
the amount of garbage on the island, and every day, the wind
and waves deliver more.

Unfortunately, the debris I see floating in
the ocean (jetsam) and that delivered to land by the ocean (flotsam)
is not only an eyesore for animals, it is yet another obstacle
to survival. Hawaiian monk seals and sea turtles become entangled
in nets and can injure themselves trying to get out or
suffocate if they fail.

Even the seabirds floating on the surface and
keeping a wary eye out for hungry sharks are not immune to the
less obvious danger posed by trash. Many of the birds feed on
fish near the surface and they often ingest floating plastic
debris at the same time. Adults of some species travel hundreds
or thousands of miles to gather food for their chicks, only to
return to the island and disgorge lighters, bottle caps and fishing
line into the stomach of their offspring. I often find the dried
carcasses of chicks with undigested bits of plastic among
their bleached bones.

Every year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
(NOAA) sends a boat out to collect marine debris on the beaches
of the northwestern Hawaiian Islands. Between 2001 and 2004,
NOAA personnel gathered nearly 422 tons of garbage—and
the amount they collect each year keeps rising. But I imagine
that one ship picking up debris over all of French Frigate Shoals
is something like me trying to clean up East Island with one
5 gallon bucket.

As good as it might feel to see the pile of trash I have gathered
growing outside my tent, it is becoming apparent that picking
up debris after it has arrived is the wrong way to go about
it. Instead, we need to keep all the flotsam from ever becoming
jetsam.

The time I spend collecting plastic and glass bottles with
faded writing in Japanese, English, Arabic, Korean and Spanish
on an 11-acre spit of sand in the middle of the Pacific also shows
me that, as wide and expansive as the oceans are, every bit of
it is vulnerable to individual human actions virtually anywhere
in the world. Ultimately, the Earth itself is nothing more than
a small, fragile island paradise.